What do you mean by "only obvious in extreme cases?"
I would definitely not agree that the connection between rational individuals and rational society is merely implied by the use of the same word, I would absolutely say that they're inextricably linked. Having attempted cooperative projects with other people over a wide range of rationality levels, I've found that working with groups of more rational individuals really does eliminate a huge cohort of problems which attend the work of less rational individuals.
One member on this site, years ago, discussed how his boss had once remarked on how well a project he (the commenter) had handled had gone, and spoken of it as if it were simply a fortuitous chance. And the commenter explained to the boss that the project had gone well because he'd designed it to go well by addressing the possible points of failure. This was a possibility that had simply never occurred to his boss before.
Operating within rational versus irrational groups can spell the difference between everyone understanding concepts like this versus nobody understanding them.
What do you mean by "only obvious in extreme cases?"
Just, that there is no obvious mechanism that produces a more rational society from more rational people.
Again I agree on the positive effects of rationality and do believe that more rationality will improve society. But there are many people that say the same about religion, obedience or other things that I don't view as positive.
Does anyone know of a good article that illustrates how society is generally irrational, and how making society more rational would have huge benefits, because it'd be a very high level action?
I'm writing an essay about how to improve education, and one of my proposals is that a core part of the curriculum should be rationality. I believe that doing this would have huge benefits to society, and want to explain why I think this, but I'm having trouble. Any thoughts?
Edit: Part of Raising the Sanity Waterline talks about common ways in which people are irrational. However, they're all links to longer Less Wrong articles. Preferably, I'd like to illustrate it in a few sentences/paragraphs.